


Phantom Traveler

by crowleyshouseplant (orphan_account)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-01
Updated: 2011-11-01
Packaged: 2017-10-25 14:28:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/271304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Becky Rosen, you were never a joke to me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Phantom Traveler

Becky Rosen is twenty-seven years old. Becky Rosen is also single and lives in a one room apartment at the top of a wibbly-wobbly building that she suspects would topple over if the wind ever gusted strongly enough. There are no rats because Becky has traps—not the kind that kill the poor things, just the kind that cage them, and then she drives them out to the country and releases them.

She does have roach poison though. There is a line and that is where she draws it.

Becky Rosen has a degree in English.

She was supposed to be a published author someday.

It hasn’t happened yet, but she works as a clerk at the local library because she was too poor to get her masters’ and honestly, she wasn’t sure if she could stand another round of Azkaban in the name of college education. Sometimes, if she sees a book someone returns and it looks interesting, she sets it aside instead of reshelving it like she’s supposed to and checks it out at the end of her shift.

Sometimes she’ll end up finishing the entire thing in the evening as she sets the book carefully to the side, twirling her fork through noodles barely saucy and barely cooked, just the way she likes it, and slurps it down just like she gobbles up the words and chapters of her current novel until she forgets she’s in an apartment with insulation so bad it’s ice cold in winter and sweltering hot in summer.

That’s how she comes across a book by Carver Edlund,  _The Phantom Traveler_. It’s not her normal fair—she goes more for science fiction and, if she’s in the mood, the vintage science fiction—the kind where burly heroes carry barely clad damsels in swooning distress—but she’s not really into the horror genre.

Life is scary enough, she thinks, without adding to it.

But she stares at the cover even though she knows that she shouldn’t judge a book by that—and it sports two rugged males with ripped muscles and ripped shirts staring ruggedly at each other as a plane flies somewhere off in the horizon.

It looks absolutely ridiculous (but, let’s face it, no more ridiculous than the face of a John Carter novel) but no other books catch her eye so Becky decides to take it home with her. She reads it that night—no, that’s a lie—she devours it. She forgets about her hot cocoa. She forgets about eating her dinner. She forgets that she has to go to work tomorrow and that it’s past midnight and that her alarm is set for six twenty-five so that she has time for a thirty minute walk before a breakfast of waffles and maple syrup.

Perhaps the thing that surprises her the most is that the two men on the cover aren’t lovers.

They’re brothers.

Becky’s never had a brother before, but she has a sister—and her sister lives just on the other side of town. Sometimes they get together. Sometimes they call each other. But, when Becky’s apartment flooded with a backed up toilet, she had gone over to her sister’s house, but she hadn’t slept in her underwear like Dean had in his boxer shorts at the beginning of the novel.

The next day, she finds the other Carver Edlund novels—books one through three—and takes them home with her. She’s fascinated because the brothers are so aware of each other—they’re aware of their physical space, of the way their limbs move, and how they don’t ever pass up an opportunity to punch each other, to touch each other.

And Becky’s pretty sure that the only reason—the real reason—the woman in white is able to put her hands through Sam’s chest is because it’s not Jessica’s he’s been unfaithful to, it’s Dean.

It’s cold and it’s past midnight and her heater’s broken down, so Becky huddles deeper into her afghan, clutches it tight across her shoulders, tucks herself closer into her corner of the couch. She glances to the far end of it, how it’s empty, the cushions still stiff like new because Becky never sits on that side.

Becky sees it—even if Sam and Dean don’t. Dean could have just left, but he was there for Sam when Jessica died in the fire. Sam could just go off and look for Dad by himself, but he doesn’t—he doesn’t leave Dean alone—not again.

They’re stuck with each other, forever. They can try to be alone, but they won’t ever because one will always be there, even if he’s three states over or just in the next bed over.

They’re brothers. But they’re more than that.

So much more because they’re bigger on the inside than on the outside.


End file.
